14 July 2008 - 6:17Syriana and looking back at historical texts from the middle east

Syriana is arguably one of the best political films to be released in the past decade. As George Clooney has said: “I make Ocean’s Thirteen for the studio, they let me make Syriana - quid pro quo”. Below is a trailer of the film (for those who have not seen it, or just want to remember a little about it) and a link to the classic “Travels in Syria and Holy Land” by John Lewis Burckhardt published in 1822.

Reading the original texts describing the region during the 19th and early 20th centuries provides an additional layer of understanding and Burckhardt was an amazing explorer and traveler offering a unique cultural perspective in his work.

TRAVELS IN SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND by John Lewis Burkhardt

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SYRIANA TRAILER:

John Lewis Burkhardt - From Wikipedia.org

After studying in Leipzig and at the University of Göttingen he visited England in the summer of 1806, carrying a letter of introduction from the naturalist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach to Sir Joseph Banks, who, with the other members of the African Association,accepted his offer in 1809 to launch an expedition to discover the source of the River Niger. Upon acceptance Burckhardt planned to travel to the Levant in order to study Arabic, in the belief that his journey to Africa would be facilitated if he was accepted to be as a Muslim.

As preparation Burckhardt briefly studied Arabic at the University of Cambridge and prepared for his rigorous career as an explorer by wandering bareheaded in the English countryside during a heatwave, subsisting on vegetables and water, and sleeping on the bare ground.

Burckhardt left England in March 1809 for Malta, whence he proceeded, in the following autumn, to Aleppo, Syria in order to perfect his Arabic and study Islamic Law. In order to obtain a better knowledge of oriental life he disguised himself as a Muslim, and took the name of Sheikh Ibrahim Ibn Abdallah. There is some indication that his conversion to Islam may have been sincere, although his family denies this.

After two years passed in the Levant he had thoroughly mastered Arabic, and had acquired such accurate knowledge of the Qur’an, and of the commentaries upon its religion and laws, that after a critical examination the most learned Muslims entertained no doubt of his being really what he professed to be, a learned doctor of their law.

During his residence in Syria, Burckhardt visited Palmyra, Damascus, Lebanon and made a series of other exploratory trips in the region. One of these trips, in what is now modern-day Jordan, resulted in his
‘discovery’ of the extensive and unique ruins of Petra which had been undiscovered for nearly a millennium. Unsatisfied with the magnitude of this discovery he was determined to carry on with his
original aim to uncover the source of the River Niger. Thus he in 1812 went to Cairo with the intention of joining a caravan to Fezzan, in Libya.

Burckhardt temporarily abandoned this goal to travel up the Nile as far as Dar Mahass; and then, finding it impossible to penetrate westward, he made a journey through the Nubian desert in the character of a poor Syrian merchant, passing by Berber and Shendi to Suakin, on the Red Sea, whence he performed the pilgrimage to Mecca by way of Jidda. At Mecca he stayed three months and afterwards visited Medina.

After enduring privations and sufferings of the severest kind, he returned to Cairo in June 1815 in a state of great exhaustion; but in the spring of 1816 he travelled to Mount Sinai, whence he returned to Cairo in June, and there again made preparations for his intended journey to Fezzan. Several hindrances prevented his
prosecuting this intention, and finally, in April 1817, when the long-expected caravan prepared to depart, he was seized by dysentery and died on the 15th of October. He had from time to time carefully transmitted to England his journals and notes, and a copious series of letters, so very few details of his journeys have been lost. He bequeathed his collection of 800 vols. of oriental manuscripts to the library of Cambridge University.

Buy the regular print or EasyScript trade paperback